Surface Water
Surface Water
Streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs - collectively referred to as surface water - are important natural resources for irrigation, public supply, wetlands and wildlife. Surface water is also measured as annual runoff, which is the amount of rain and snowmelt drainage left after the demands of nature, evaporation from land, and transpiration from vegetation have been supplied. It supplies most of our basic water needs.
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Geomorphic Assessment and Restoration Alternatives Development for the Merced River in East Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park
The National Park Service (NPS) and USGS jointly will investigate impacts to the Merced River due to infrastructure and historic channel widening in east Yosemite Valley with a goal of constructing river management alternatives. Past management actions, such as gravel mining, channel riprap, and the construction of bridges that do not accommodate flood flows, have had long-lasting impacts to the...
Additional characterization of the impact of suction dredging, South Yuba River – Humbug Creek
The potential impacts of suction dredging on water quality remain largely undetermined, especially with regard to trace metals including Hg. Several State of California regulatory agencies have expressed concerns that suction dredging may cause deleterious impacts with regard to turbidity and Hg contamination in downstream areas.
Determination of Mercury Loads for Cache Creek Settling Basin Inflow and Outflows and Related Investigations
Mercury (Hg), a legacy pollutant from mining of mercury deposits in the Coast Ranges as well as gold deposits in the Sierra Nevada, has contaminated surface waters throughout northern California. Methylmercury (MeHg) is an organic form of Hg that bioaccumulates in food webs to elevated concentrations that threaten ecological health and human health through consumption of sport fish.
Suspended-Solids Concentrations in San Francisco Bay, California
Suspended solids are an important component of San Francisco Bay, California (USA) because they transport adsorbed toxic substances, provide habitat for benthic organisms, limit light availability and photosynthesis, and deposit in ports and waterways which require dredging. The U.S. Geological Survey has established a network of eight sites in San Francisco Bay at which suspended-solids...
San Francisco Bay Wetlands Priority Ecosystem Studies
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's (USFWS) San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge manages wildlife at a number of salt ponds that the Cargill Corporation currently operates for salt production. A number of these ponds probably will be purchased by the USFWS. With acquisition, the USFWS will be responsible for maintenance or restoration of thousands of hectares of wetlands, an extremely complex...
Impact of Climate Change on Future Suitability of the Sierra Nevada for Wolverines
The endeavor to ensure a viable population of the threatened wolverine to the mountains of California requires the characterization of suitable habitat.
Exploring: Reservoir Capacity And Sedimentation Of The Fena Valley Reservoir Guam
The Fena Valley Reservoir, located in southern Guam, is the primary source of water for the United States Naval Base Guam and nearby village residents. At full capacity, the reservoir surface area extends approximately 0.30 mi 2 , and drains a watershed area of about 5.88 mi 2 . After reservoir construction, periodic bathymetric surveys, coupled with sedimentation models, can be used to produce...
Surrogate Monitoring of Sediment Transport using Hydrophones along the San Joaquin River and Tributaries
Traditional methods for measuring coarse bedload sediment transport by discrete physical sampling tend to be labor intensive and expensive ( Gray and others, 2010 ). As such, bedload samples often are collected too infrequently to capture the temporal variability inherent in transport rates, which can vary significantly, sometimes by a factor of ten or more, over time periods of several minutes to...
Trends in Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
Water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta contains high concentrations of disinfection byproduct-forming (DBP-forming) materials when treated for potable use. DBPs form when dissolved organic compounds (DOC) in water react with disinfectants such as chlorine and ozone during the water treatment process. The amount of DBPs that form is a function of both the amount and source of the DOC, both of...
The role of the alien clam Corbicula fluminea in the regulation of organic carbon in the San Joaquin River watershed
Sources and fate of various forms of organic carbon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) and San Joaquin River watershed are of concern because of the importance of identifying the sources of carbon contributing to the oxygen depletion zone on the San Joaquin River near the city of Stockton, the need to understand the causes of the low primary and secondary production in the Delta, and the...
Pathogen Total Maximum Daily Loads Modeling in the Chino Basin
The Santa Ana River in Southern California is the primary water supply for approximately 2 million people. The main constituent of regulatory concern is pathogens that have impaired the use of waters for the beneficial uses of warm freshwater habitat and noncontact water recreation. Pathogen loadings from the tributary watershed flows into lakes and streams leading into the Santa Ana River...
Processes Controlling Riverbank Filtration of Pathogens in the Russian River Basin, Sonoma County, California
The Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) supplies drinking water to municipalities and water districts in Sonoma and Marin Counties by diverting water from the alluvial aquifer underlying and adjacent to the Russian River. The U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with SCWA, is conducting an ongoing research program on water quality conditions in the Russian River and the physical and geochemical...